Sunday November 12, 2006
Council: It’s the sexy dress
BY K. SUTHAKAR
PENANG: If the dress was not sexy, the incident would not have happened.
This was Penang Municipal Council president Datuk Abu Bakar Hassan's response to a complaint that the closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera in City Hall was zooming onto the thighs of women journalists instead of council proceedings.
Abu Bakar was unhappy that some women were attired “sexily” while covering the full council meeting at the council chamber. He even proposed a dress code for the media, adding that guidelines would be drawn up soon.
“The issue is the sexy dress worn by the journalist. If it was not sexy, the incident would not have arisen,” he told newsmen at his Hari Raya open house at his residence here yesterday.
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Chow showing the police report which she lodged yesterday. |
In the Friday incident, a newsman spotted the image of a woman’s thighs on the CCTV of the control room and alerted other journalists who lodged a complaint with council secretary Ooi Chin Loo after the meeting.
Ooi immediately sought an explanation from the technician inside the control room who claimed that the CCTV camera could not be adjusted to zoom in on anyone from the room.
New Straits Times journalist Melissa Darlyne Chow, 23, who lodged a police report yesterday, said she was surprised by Abu Bakar's “sexist” statement.
“He is implying that I was not properly attired and that I deserved the unwanted attention. The skirt I wore was decent working attire,” she said.
Chow said she was not aware that the camera was focusing on her thighs until a journalist told her to cover it up with a piece of paper.
“He then asked me to shift to another seat,” she said in her report lodged at the George Town district police station yesterday.
State Local Government committee chairman Datuk Dr Teng Hock Nan said he was awaiting a report from the council.
“It is too early to talk about what action to be taken since we don't know whether it was done on purpose. It could be due to a technical fault in the CCTV system,” he said.
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